Which games do you own but can't you actually run (as well as you'd like - at least!)

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Which games do you own but can't you actually run (as well as you'd like - at least!)

Earlier this year, I picked-up Need for Speed: The Run via a stack of Coke Zone points - but try as I might it's just not going to run properly on this PC.

It's almost a hobby I've developed - seeing if I can get it to work better from time-to-time - but I think I've about rinsed my options...

My take is that it NEEDS more than 2 Cores - my CPU (Athlon2 x2) is at 100% pretty-much constantly wheras my GPU runs at low utilisation even with some settings turned-up above 'Recommended' - and it's not better with everything on 'Low' so I'm fairly sure it's CPU-bound.

In fact I'd go further and say it's probably a PhysX issue - Shift and Shift 2 had similar problems which were solved, eventually, by updating PhysX. Not having a high-end nVidia GPU means it's loading all the work on the CPU I guess??

It remains the only game I've tried on this PC which doesn't work well enough to be really playable - because it's hard to control a car on a nice drift when your FPS is leaping from 15 to 30 and back!!

So - what games do you lot have which won't run as well as you'd like - what games have you sidelined for your 'next PC' - what games lied particularly egregiously on their Requirements?? :)

The only game that really struggles is PlanetSide 2. Just about everything else will play and look ok on medium. Some on high. But then I have a Phen'y II 4 core and an ATI 4870, so it's only just out of the specs for the newer games. That and I rarely buy newer games these days.

Crysis: No way in hell the machine I had when this game was new could handle it. Now it seems to hate modern systems.
Sword of the Stars II: Not even slightly optimised, so I'd need a much better machine to run it.

I actually have quite a few games on Steam that I bought when they were ridiculously cheap, despite knowing that I don't have a machine that can handle them.

Battlefield 3. with everything set to low, I still only manage about 20 fps (less during intense fire-fights). I Believe the issue is the same as the OP's, that it only plays nice with quad cores (I've got an Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core). Otherwise I'm pretty selective of the games I play, because I know alot of them won't run well on my pc.

Sword of the Stars II: Not even slightly optimised, so I'd need a much better machine to run it.

Try the enhanced edition, and you might be pleasantly surprised. I'm running it on a fairly mediocre laptop GPU (nvidia 540m), and i'm not having any real performance issues. It looks very pretty, too. It's came on leaps and bounds from when it was first released.

There's plenty of games I have in deep freeze. At least Crysis, Metro, GTA IV, Alan Wake and the Witchers come to mind. Some of them would probably be playable, but why bother when I can max them out and fully enjoy after next PC upgrade? It's not like I'm going to run out of game backlog anyway.

Oh - I forgot Sonic and Sega AllStar Racing which has astonishing 'random lags' on every PC I've tried it on.

I'm suspecting it probably does it on EVERY PC - given that Sonic Generations, which I reckon pushes your PC rather harder - runs quite well!!!?

I am beginning to see the need for 3+ cores - even over extra memory/a new GPU tho. In fact looking at the logs I generated whilst I was trying to trace my 'freezing' problem, not one game I own has tried to use more than 3Gb of RAM - so unless I want to run 2 at once, 4Gb is enough :)

Having just upgraded my hardware in May, I can run pretty much everything I want. The main bottleneck in games is my large screen, which I wouldn't do without because of my regular 3D modelling and photo work. But since it runs on a resolution of 2560x1600 - about double the pixels of a Full HD (1920x1080) resolution - it can be pretty taxing on my video-card. The one game that really gave me trouble was The Witcher 2. I eventually went back to 1920x1200 for that.

I also have a special category on Steam for unsupported games that don't run on my system. This includes DiRT and Midnight Club II, which don't support Windows 7. I think that was the reason, anyway.

"He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to
the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free". ~ Luke 4:18

The only game that really struggles is PlanetSide 2. Just about everything else will play and look ok on medium. Some on high. But then I have a Phen'y II 4 core and an ATI 4870, so it's only just out of the specs for the newer games. That and I rarely buy newer games these days.

This, pretty much. I can play more or less every modern game I own on high (occasionally highest) graphics settings, but Planetside 2 simply will not run consistently at more than 20fps on any settings whatsoever. It can be fine when I first load in, but the FPS dives whenever I enter any combat. God knows how long I've spent trying every option, every little trick. I put up with it for a while during beta as I was hopeful for greater optimisation toward release, but I can see now that I'll not be able to enjoy it until I can afford a new build. Its very frustrating...

I occasionally write things on this website. You can read these things by clicking this thing:www.teamsao.com

I am beginning to see the need for 3+ cores - even over extra memory/a new GPU tho. In fact looking at the logs I generated whilst I was trying to trace my 'freezing' problem, not one game I own has tried to use more than 3Gb of RAM - so unless I want to run 2 at once, 4Gb is enough :)

Yup - I realise that 3Gb is maybe all it can get (as Windows will be using the rest more than likely) but even then, only "The Run" and "Space Marine" use that sort of memory - most other games seem to use been 1Gb and 2Gb...

Oh and Dirt works fine on this system (Win7-64) - I know it's listed as not compatible but I've had zero issues with it - completed it pretty much soup-to-nuts...

Try the enhanced edition, and you might be pleasantly surprised. I'm running it on a fairly mediocre laptop GPU (nvidia 540m), and i'm not having any real performance issues. It looks very pretty, too. It's came on leaps and bounds from when it was first released.

Ah, that's out now eh? I made sure I bought the game before that came out, as I head it would be free if I did.
I last tried it a few weeks ago and it was pretty bad, but that was the original game.

Farcry 3. I have a much better machine than some people that are getting 60 fps because but since I have a shitty AMD vidya card I generally don't get to enjoy new releases on PC till some months later since NODRIVERS

Ah, that's out now eh? I made sure I bought the game before that came out, as I head it would be free if I did.
I last tried it a few weeks ago and it was pretty bad, but that was the original game.

Yeah, it's been out a few days now. I got it in a bundle a couple of months ago, and gave it a go then - so I can honestly say that there's a big difference between the pre- and post-enhanced edition game, performance-wise anyway. There may well be a good game in there too, but i haven't been able to put the time in to learn how to play, so i can't really say.